Garbage Stand Attempt

Every winter, our neighbor takes his bobcat and clears the alley of snow by piling it high against our fence. I would have to dig a place to put the garbage each week. This fall, I quickly scrabbled together this garbage stand out of scrap pieces of wood and cinderblocks for a base. I put the tall vertical pieces so that the neighbor can see where it is even when there is tons of snow.

I still need to put something around the base, preferably not wood that will just rot in the snow. Maybe metal flashing? I haven't decided yet. Next year I hope to actually grow grass back there... or something.

Tree Table

Last year, a truck slid off the icy road into one of our trees. I thought the tree was going to be okay, but the first big wind of spring blew the top of the tree right over. After levelling off the top, I sat there wondering, do I dig up the stump? What do I do with this?

While I was distracted in mommy daydreams, my oldest son comes running to report the three of them had completely smashed their wooden toy box while pretending it was a bus. The only piece remaining intact was the blue sturdy wooden lid. Thus a silly table was born. The chairs were ones that the cushions wore off and I was saving them to make new cushions. They work way better as plant stands! And I plan on adding a few more birdhouses to the table!

Note: The We Go Bagless sign is from the City of Edmonton program to promote grass-cycling and reduce the amount of trash for the waste collectors. It is a great program and a lot less work than bagging up grass!

Pretty in Pink Polish

Not only do I like to save money, but I like the idea of recycling old things and saving them from the landfill. Why buy new when there are so many unique things you can do to reuse?!

I found an interesting wooden shelf in a thrift shop. At home, I sprayed it pink and now it holds my daughter's nail polishes. 

I  liked it the nail polish shelf so much and I remembered that the thrift shop had two so I went back for the other one. The other one I left natural for my son's toys.

After School Snack place

After school, this is where I hang out with the kids and have a snack. We chat about their day away from books, backpacks, chores and distractions.

Flexible Furniture

As our family grows older, our needs change. I try to buy very sturdy furniture that I can imagine multiple uses for and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. This white bookcase from Ikea has been moved three times and as you can see, it is no small piece.

On the left, you can see how it was originally used to fill a great multipurpose need in my kitchen/livingroom/diningroom/daycare space.

A couple years later, my home daycare closed and we rearranged the house and moved hubby's office out of the basement. The basement became the kids' primary domain. We turned his former office into a play space.

I was desperate for toy storage.  I took apart the giant shelf and brought it down stairs to our play room and its primary purpose was toy storage.

Now we have moved to a completely new house. Some of my kids are still into small toys, so bins on the bottom work great for all those legos, cars, trains and dollies! My older child is into gaming consoles and so now it the bookshelf sports all the games, cords, gadgets and related gaming paraphernalia.

Faux Fireplace

These crazy double arches are what drew me to the new house initially. But I could never really bear the white of one and the wood of the other with that crazy faux fireplace in between.

I painted the wooden arch white to match the smaller arch. I took some old recycled gray paint added some water and softly painted that orange faux brick. I thought it turned out ok.

But I still wasn't happy with the fake wood. My youngest mentioned he wanted a fishtank for his birthday and I wanted it down low enough he could help take care of the fish without risk of tipping the tank over. The cats are delighted and love to lay in front of the tank and watch the fish!

Touch of Teal

The old house I've been working on for nearly a year is almost done. It is a small bungalow but the livingroom and kitchen are in this open concept style so there is a large continuous space I have been trying to figure out how to tie together to stage for sale. I just needed a pop of teal in the kitchen so I printed the little Mary Poppins quote from my computer and the rest is materials from a scrap book making kit.

To update the kitchen, we did many very simple little things. We added a sticker tile metal back splash from Home Depot. One cupboard door was in really bad shape, so I just took it off and hung wine glass holders in the top shelf.  There was a funny looking gap between the corner cupboard and the window, so I put in two corner shelves in to round out the space.

The range hood exhaust pipe was quite ugly above the cupboards. So I got some tin from Home Depot, bent it to shape, spray-painted it with white appliance enamel paint to match the appliances and it is just sitting up there looking like its attached to the range hood through the cupboard.  A little hard to see in the picture because I placed some silver metal tins up there for decoration.

Then I painted the kitchen cupboards grey and the pots are hanging from a bathroom shelf I found at Ikea. Very simple little changes, but it all came together well for a clean aesthetic and functional look.